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odd_buttonsThe following is an excerpt from Part III of the book Making Shapely Fiction, by Jerome Stern. The first two parts are very much worth reading as well. The book is available in paperback.
Satire
Traditionally, satire is said to use humor to attack evils in order to reform its objects of criticism. But satire is often neither humorous in the conventional sense nor very likely to bring about any change of heart of mind in its targets.
A more realistic definition of satire states that it uses the oblique strategies of art to expose the foolishness or iniquity in various practices, ideas, and people. It ranges from mild and playful to corrosive and violent. Subjects range from the minor irritations of everyday life to the major brutalities of governments and gods. Strategies include exaggeration, irony, caricature, parable, fable, burlesque, sarcasm, and ingenuousness.
A satire's criticism needs to be in proportion to the object of the satire. That is, it doesn't work to express great moral outrage over the popularity of shoulder pads, the vulgarity of underarm deodorant commercials, or the misuse of the word hopefully. The object there is to make people aware, to get them to laugh at themselves, and perhaps be more conscious of the follies of their world.
But serious satirists like Jonathan Swift, who wrote about the cruelty of religious wars, or Mark Twain, who wrote about the monstrousness of the slave trade, tend not to be funny. They use devices like caricature and exaggeration, but the caricatures are magnified and the exaggerations intensified. They express an indignation to strong that language can barely contain it, and good manners or matters of tastefulness seem pitifully irrelevant. William Burroughs writes of a society he thinks is so obscene that only obscenity can express it.
If you write satire you must balance criticism and humor. If you're too upset, the work becomes a diatribe, not a satire. If you're too amused, you seem to be condoning what you want to condemn. Lately, satirists complain of being overtaken by history -- they invent wild exaggerations, and find them happening in the next day's headlines.
Satirists tend to be most perceptive and successful when they deal with their own country, their own class, their own circle. A satiric novel needs to keep readers' attention as other novels do -- through intriguing characters, lively plots, and interesting situations. The most pervasive device of the satiric novel is not laughter -- it's a wry humor wreathed with barbed insights and structured on danger, escape, and death. That was true for Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels, Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn, and Franz Kafka's The Trial, and it's true of Kurt Vonnegut's Player Piano, Tom Wolfe's Bonfire of the Vanities, and Milan Kundera's Book of Laugher and Forgetting.
Satirists have a particularly interesting problem -- being completely misunderstood. Would-be satirists write to their newspaper attacking the sexism or atomic warfare with ironic praise. Then a swarm of letters attacks them for being sexists or nuclear nuts. Daniel Defoe went to jail because his satire was misunderstood. The successful satirist must embed enough information so that her point is not overwhelmed, and she must make sure she is not swallowed by her own satire.
See Comedy, Parody.
Satire
Traditionally, satire is said to use humor to attack evils in order to reform its objects of criticism. But satire is often neither humorous in the conventional sense nor very likely to bring about any change of heart of mind in its targets.
A more realistic definition of satire states that it uses the oblique strategies of art to expose the foolishness or iniquity in various practices, ideas, and people. It ranges from mild and playful to corrosive and violent. Subjects range from the minor irritations of everyday life to the major brutalities of governments and gods. Strategies include exaggeration, irony, caricature, parable, fable, burlesque, sarcasm, and ingenuousness.
A satire's criticism needs to be in proportion to the object of the satire. That is, it doesn't work to express great moral outrage over the popularity of shoulder pads, the vulgarity of underarm deodorant commercials, or the misuse of the word hopefully. The object there is to make people aware, to get them to laugh at themselves, and perhaps be more conscious of the follies of their world.
But serious satirists like Jonathan Swift, who wrote about the cruelty of religious wars, or Mark Twain, who wrote about the monstrousness of the slave trade, tend not to be funny. They use devices like caricature and exaggeration, but the caricatures are magnified and the exaggerations intensified. They express an indignation to strong that language can barely contain it, and good manners or matters of tastefulness seem pitifully irrelevant. William Burroughs writes of a society he thinks is so obscene that only obscenity can express it.
If you write satire you must balance criticism and humor. If you're too upset, the work becomes a diatribe, not a satire. If you're too amused, you seem to be condoning what you want to condemn. Lately, satirists complain of being overtaken by history -- they invent wild exaggerations, and find them happening in the next day's headlines.
Satirists tend to be most perceptive and successful when they deal with their own country, their own class, their own circle. A satiric novel needs to keep readers' attention as other novels do -- through intriguing characters, lively plots, and interesting situations. The most pervasive device of the satiric novel is not laughter -- it's a wry humor wreathed with barbed insights and structured on danger, escape, and death. That was true for Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels, Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn, and Franz Kafka's The Trial, and it's true of Kurt Vonnegut's Player Piano, Tom Wolfe's Bonfire of the Vanities, and Milan Kundera's Book of Laugher and Forgetting.
Satirists have a particularly interesting problem -- being completely misunderstood. Would-be satirists write to their newspaper attacking the sexism or atomic warfare with ironic praise. Then a swarm of letters attacks them for being sexists or nuclear nuts. Daniel Defoe went to jail because his satire was misunderstood. The successful satirist must embed enough information so that her point is not overwhelmed, and she must make sure she is not swallowed by her own satire.
See Comedy, Parody.